The Encircling Cells

Trapped by deadly wraiths, an old hermit must rediscover an ancient magic and confront his past.

Ruathen woke at midnight to ear-splitting cries. “Dread-shades,” he murmured. “Hellish beasts.” He tore about his room, stuffing what he needed into his pack. Then he ran. His ancient legs were slow, but shades were not overly quick.

The wraiths were dangerous, though, and they were all over. Every corridor and derelict room seemed to have its own specter of pale light and snarling fangs. Ruathen scurried through his crumbling monastery, hoping the demons wouldn’t sense him; he passed through the open doorway of the belltower, groped in the dark for the rope-ladder, then climbed. It was an effort for the old man to heft himself through the trapdoor at the top. He pulled the ladder up, rung by rung, and closed the hatch. 

There was total darkness, but at least he was alone now. 

“Alright then,” he panted. “Time to banish the fiends.” He reached into his bag and removed the codex which contained the spell. It was a simple remedy: Read the Words, ring the bell, and the monsters would be expelled. “Just need to fetch my…”

Ruathen’s hand kept searching the bag. It shot around like a trapped ferret. He upturned the pack: three clinks, a thud, and a clap. No candle, though. 

“I can’t Read the Words if I can’t damn well see!” Ruathen cursed himself in the darkness.

Death stalked below. 

✹ ✹ ✹

Ruathen woke to find himself clutching the silver ring he’d always worn around his neck. He lay there for a few minutes, watching through the tiny window as the dawn illuminated the world. The attic was round, like the tower itself, and sat beneath the shuttered belfry. Below the floor was a hundred-span drop to the flagstones. Ruathen tried not to think about that, but the room had little distraction to offer: the coiled rope-ladder, a rotting nest in the window, a dusty stool…

At least the view was pleasant. He stood to look out the window upon the ruined monastery he called home. Its falling walls and creeping vines were captivating as ever. Surely, he could never tire of living here. The other monks had left ages ago, bringing their magic into the city to better serve the populace. Ruathen hadn’t joined them. He didn’t need them. He had himself.

He had always been happiest on his own. As an infant, he’d been abandoned at the abbey with nothing but the ring that still hung around his neck. Ruathen kept that ring not to remember his parents, whomever they might have been, but as a reminder of his self-sufficiency. He’d raised himself. He’d taught himself. Now he’d made a home for himself here, keeping the forest at bay for twenty-odd years. Alone. 

A shadow moved out of that forest and entered the ruins of what had once been the scriptorium. The fiend was a seething spirit with lightless eyes and lip-less maw. 

Fear rose in him, sharpened by guilt. This was his fault. The monks rang the Bell-Offering every morning to keep these monsters away, but it had been years since Ruathen last did the ritual. Decades, in fact. He’d known this could happen, and he’d chosen to ignore it. 

A wail from below confirmed his idiocy. He bent to look through the floorboards: he saw several twisting shapes. One floated up towards him. He jumped away. Fear clenched at his bowels, told him to run or fight; he could do neither. 

He was safe—mostly. Dread-shades could fly, but not through barriers, temporal or otherwise.

Ruathen, meanwhile, could not delay. He had no way to meet his bodily needs—no latrine, no water, and no food. The wraiths could wait to drink his soul, but he would have three days, maybe four, before his body fell to thirst. His mouth was already dry. “No matter,” he comforted himself. “I’ll be out soon enough.”

Ruathen took inventory of what he’d brought, all still scattered where he’d overturned his bag: a knife, useless against the demons, as Ruathen chided himself; a box of incense for the ritual; a flint and striker; and two books, a copy of Aebba’s Rubrics and The Codex of Protection. 

This he opened, blowing off the dust and flipping to the ritual’s start. The gold decorations were as bright as he remembered, the calligraphy was a deep black except where some Words were a striking red. It even smelled the same! The redolence took Ruathen back to younger days, when the scriptorium was full and his brother monks would coo over a new tome. He’d forgotten their names. Had they forgotten his?

Ruathen went to check the bell. Opening the hatch on the low ceiling, he looked up into the belfry. The bell still had its rope and even a bit of shine … but no clapper, and none to be found. Anxiety rose in his heart. The ritual required the bell.

A moan came from below.

He ignored it, pacing, thinking. 

“That might work…” he finally said. He fetched the knife, pulled his necklace over his head, then hesitated. He’d worn this, what, sixty years? He’d lost count. I’ve always been on my own, he thought, looking at the ring’s tarnished silver. I can solve this on my own too. He severed the cord and set it aside. The ring he put on his finger and thought it too wide and heavy. All these years, and it didn’t fit.

✹ ✹ ✹

Twenty minutes later, he’d tied the knife to the string and the string to the inside of the bell. He swung the knife against the bell and produced the tiniest tink.

“That will show the bastards,” Ruathen chuckled.

Back to the spell. The stool became an altar. The bell-rope hung beside him. He knelt, placed the book in a puddle of light, opened it, and Read. 

Ruathen’s dry tongue was clumsy at first, but soon his heart lightened and his confidence grew. Ancient words rebounded off the walls and returned as from beyond the realm of mortal sight. Their whispers filled him with an excitement he’d not felt in a long while. He grew more assertive, projecting his voice.

Page after page he Read. Long-forgotten instructions came flooding back. Do not lose focus, his teachers had told him. Put your emotions into the Words. Find the rhythm. Keep your voice steady. Speak from your chest. With each piece of advice, Ruathen recalled a different era of his upbringing and the half-remembered faces of his tutors. 

The ritual rolled on to its pinnacle. A heaviness came into the air, a weight pressing down on his chest, filling his mind. He felt as if he was floating on the Words, buffeted by strong winds.  

Ruathen turned the page and gasped—so beautiful did this final page seem to him, leaping from the past, illuminated in deep hues of precious dye. Then the last instructions:

Place the food on the altar, it read. Burn it with incense. Ring the bell.

Ruathen’s tongue caught. How could he forget food? Before his brothers left, he’d seen this done every day. Surely it hadn’t been that long since he’d done this? “You senile fool!” he said aloud. “It’s the Bell-Offering and you’ve brought nothing to offer!” Without food, the bell would have no power; the demons would remain.

The air grew heavier with the weight of the Words. Ruathen felt himself swaying on his knees. Despair flooded him. The hermit collapsed.  

✹ ✹ ✹

First came thirst, then soreness, then the sound of rain. Ruathen woke up fully. His throat was on fire, there were tears upon his cheeks, and his fingers hurt where he had squeezed them against the ring in his oblivion. 

The rain had clouded the light; the gloom deepened as the hidden sun began to set. He’d been unconscious all day. He hadn’t had a drop to drink. 

Fighting sore muscles, Ruathen stretched his hands out the tiny window and cupped them. They began to fill, and he drank. The rain stopped after two handfuls. He licked the window frames. The man was sucking at the sill when a shadow appeared: a desiccated face, inches from his own. 

Ruathen cried out and fell back. He scrambled crab-like to the opposite wall. A ghostly limb slithered through the window, but the wraith could not get far. Its screech filled the room and the old man began to wail. 

It felt like an hour later when the dread-shade finally retreated; it left a grief upon Ruathen for long after. 

✹ ✹ ✹

The next morning, Ruathen’s stomach ached as much as his throat. After a hopeless look through the floorboards—swirling shades abounded—he knew he had to find a way to make the spell work. 

He crouched in the window’s light and opened Aebba’s Rubrics. This book held no magic, but it explained the magic of its cousin. Ruathen poured over it and marveled at how much he’d forgotten. Hours went by, and he came to the final inscriptions: 

We offer this food to recognize our dependence on the Great Vocator to banish great evils. As we demand food to live, love demands sacrifice for its life. To banish hate, the spell demands our very sustenance, given in love, to bring us life. 

That was the end of the explanation. A dead end. No food, no spell. 

“Is there no other way?” he asked the empty air. No tutor remained to answer, no master to aid him. Twenty years Ruathen had been by himself; for the first time, he felt alone.

The day passed. He wallowed in hunger and thirst. Night came again. Whispers of dead breath layered over each other and assailed him from above and below. He tried to recall when he’d last been happy. He found he had to think back a very long way indeed.

✹ ✹ ✹

On the third morning, Ruathen still had no food, but something told him to try again.

He reset his lowly altar and Read. Where before the Words were half-forgotten and foreign, now they felt like familiar company. Again his voice grew stronger; the echoes washed over him in asynchronous chorus. 

He reached the ritual’s zenith, and hesitated, not knowing what to do. He stopped speaking, yet the Words kept crashing against his ears. The man could feel the ancient chorus scouring through the cell. His hands began to shake. 

The spell demands sustenance. The thought came unbidden. 

Ruathan argued back, speaking into the cacophony of his own echoes: “I can sustain myself. I always have! What need have I for others?” The man removed his ring and held it aloft as if could prove the truth of his boast. 

Love demands sacrifice. 

“What sacrifice can I give? I’ve no one here to love.” 

The Words of Power thundered through the cell, no longer in his own voice. He could hear in those echoes the monks of the old shrine, not a stone’s throw from where he knelt but separated by half a lifetime. His mind saw every Bell-Offering he’d ever witnessed as a boy and every warm moment of fellowship he’d found in the wake of these ancient Words. His brother monks had always shown him love. What had he done with it? They had shared burdens and laughed with him. And he had let them all go. What would he give to see them again? 

Something in Ruathen broke. Tears followed. 

What would he give? 

“I’ve sustained myself, and it is not enough,” he sobbed. “I would give it all back—all these years—to be among friends again.” He lowered his ring and placed it on the stool. His fingers pinched the incense into the circle.

A spark. A hint of smoke. Beneath the arcane weight, the ring began to vibrate and then—crack!—it split open. The pieces split again and again until they became like ash and wafted into the air. 

Clang! 

He whipped his head up and saw the bell swinging by its own power.

Clang-clang! Clang!

The tower was shaking. Dust fell from the rafters. The stool tottered. A crack appeared between the rocks on the wall, letting sunlight through. The fissure grew toward the window. 

Clang-clang!

The noise was deafening. A wind gusted up as if the thick walls were nothing. Rocks rumbled and fell away. The window widened and light bathed the room in brilliance. Wailing and screaming came from outside.

Clang!

Ruathen crawled to the edge of the floor and looked out the opening. Wraiths were fleeing the sacred sounds. When they were gone, the bell stopped. The monastery was his again. Ruathen was the master of his own world. 

Never before had that world seemed so puny, futile, and lonely.

✹ ✹ ✹

The ringing faded. The ladder dropped. A monk—hermit no more—descended. He ate and drank, then packed a new bag and set out for the city. It was time to find his brothers again. It was time to give. To love.

He never looked back.

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I originally wrote and published this story as a part of the Gibberish Writing Competition 2024. (I’ve made a few minor changes since then.) The specific challenge was to write a story of about 2,000 words, over the course of five days, from the following prompt:

We’re Doin’ a Bottle Episode!

Write a “bottle episode” story with one character in one setting for the entire story. […] give your readers the urgent desire to get out of there! A required story beat is that, at the end of the story, they must get out of/leave the chosen setting. […] Can you craft a compelling story without changing the location? Can your character really shine when given 2,000 words to perform alone? Will the setting be influential to the story, or merely a backdrop? Can we maintain the precision of our writing, and introduce varied pacing, despite the unvaried prompt? Can you make your readers feel as confined as your character?

You can see the full challenge here. The other challenges included…

… a “chase” scene, for which I wrote “One Head as Tribute.”

… and an expansion of a prior micro-fiction story, for which I wrote “For Want of Safe Harbor” (which I’m proud to say was only out-scored by one other story across the entire competition).

If you’d like to read a bit more about my process for these stories and my thoughts on the competition, you can read The Story Behind the Stories: Takeaways and Lessons Learned from GWC’24.